It was late.

Or maybe it wasn't, and Karkat's biological clock was fucked up by the exhaustion which had been building steadily ever since the forced march along the beach. Either way, Karkat found himself stifling yawns as he watched Gamzee put the finishing touches on his painting. It was uncanny how much attention and finesse went into producing something which was little more than colors spewed on a canvas.

Karkat would have given anything to be able to crawl into his recuperacoon, have a nice, long sleep and wake up the next night in his own hive, alone, free to live the rest of his miserable life without casting eyes on another clown. At this point, however, he was willing to accept being locked up in a closet for the day, or whatever else Gamzee had in mind for his sleeping situation.

If he had anything in mind at all. Gamzee didn't seem like he spent much time worrying about logistics; more like the the murder-as-you-go-along type.

"Yeah, I feel ya, brother," Gamzee said as Karkat was in the middle of a yawn, making him choke in startlement.

Gamzee rose to his feet and stretched, arms extended over his head, and then relaxed, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly. Then he picked up a rag and wiped his hands, though not very successfully; they still remained mostly red.

"We best be getting our rest on."

He left the room without another word, and Karkat really had no choice but to follow. It rankled him, but even if he had the presence of mind to come up with an escape plan, leaving the hive during daylight would have been suicide.

Gamzee walked down an oddly-angled hallway with three doors. He walked through the first one, and into his respite block. Karkat followed him, though he felt sort of awkward doing so. Gamzee's respite block seemed like an uncomfortable glimpse into his psyche.

It was the clown posters. The creepy, creepy clown posters. Karkat found them sort of upsetting, though he couldn't put his finger on why. And there were horns littering the ground, except for the ones gathered in a pile in the corner, as well as soda bottles and juggling clubs. There was a table with a husktop next to another door and a recuperacoon in the opposite corner.

Gamzee had stopped in the middle of the respite block, blinking blearily as he stared at the recuperacoon. It was probably just now occurring to him that he did not have a spare for his "guest".

"Sorry, man, don't got a motherfucking 'coon for you," he said, confirming Karkat's suspicions. "Now, don't make that face, motherfucker. Not like I motherfucking meant to leave you high and dry. I just didn't think ahead, is all."

Karkat didn't think he was making any face at all, but that was a moot point.

"No, I suppose you didn't mean to. I've only known you for one night, and I can already tell thinking ahead is not exactly in your repertoire," he muttered. It was only after he'd already said it that he realized he probably shouldn't start pointing out character flaws to someone who still quite literally had blood on his hands.

The clown scowled, but it was not the same murderous expression as before.

"If you're so smart, motherfucker, what do you suggest?" Gamzee retorted.

Karkat bit back whatever annoyed reply he had ready, and made his tone sound as reasonable as he could.

"Look, just take some sopor from your recuperacoon and put it in an ablution trap, or something. It won't be pretty, but it's better than sleeping dry," Karkat said.

Gamzee's expression turned from annoyed to thoughtful.

"Huh, guess that'll motherfucking work," he said. "You ain't half stupid, for such a crazy motherfucker," he added (quite unnecessarily, in Karkat's view).

"Depressingly, that's probably the biggest fucking compliment anyone's ever given me," Karkat replied.

"Naw, man, naw. I motherfucking told you, didn't I? You got motherfucking miracles in your veins," Gamzee said, suddenly incensed.

"Alright, second biggest," Karkat said quickly, partly because he didn't want to annoy Gamzee, and partly because he didn't want to hear anymore of his goddamn stupid ramblings. "Still fucking depressing."

Gamzee shrugged vaguely. He looked about as tired and Karkat felt, and without a perceived attack on his religious beliefs, didn't seem inclined to argue.

They resolved the sopor situation as Karkat had suggested, and despite the fact that it was cramped and uncomfortable and not the least bit like a recuperacoon, Karkat fell asleep right away. If he had any dreams that day, he was too tired to remember when he woke up again.

Karkat woke up confused and sore, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It took him a few moments to recall the events of the previous night, and when he did, he groaned and fell back in the sopor, regretting that he'd even woken up.

But the ablution trap was uncomfortable and the sopor slime was starting to go off—probably because Gamzee hadn't changed it in a while—so Karkat crawled out and stretched awkwardly (though Gamzee's ablution trap was much larger than Karkat's, it still didn't allow for much leg room). His slimy clothes stuck to his skin, but even without that, his shirt was encrusted with blood and stiff.

He sat on the edge of the ablution trap, pushed up his sleeve and checked the bandages on his arm. The cut no longer hurt, so he carefully started to unravel the bandages. They stuck to the scab, and he had to pull quickly to tug them loose, but the cut had been thin and precise, and was healing well. He could probably do without bandages, especially since they were slimy now, anyway.

When he looked up, he saw a plate full of sandwiches by the door (so the clown did own tableware), along with a note, written in indigo.

wEnT oUt FoR a BiT, bE bAcK sOoN
hOnK

Karkat had no idea what to make of the note (...honk? What?), so he shifted his attention to the sandwiches. If he thought they were inedible fresh, they were even harder to keep down after sitting out for a while. The grub sauce on the five sandwiches had congealed into a substance not unlike cement, and Karkat hardly got through one before he gave up and threw the rest down the load gaper.

Eating to keep up his strength was one thing, but clown cuisine would probably kill him. How could Gamzee eat this shit? Did he actually think this was good food? Didn't he know how to make something else? Even Karkat could blunder his way around a food preparation block and accidentally make something which would probably qualify as "nutritious".

How old was Gamzee, anyway? Karkat had assumed he was maybe a sweep older, going by how much taller he was, but maybe he was older and his growth had been stunted by his terrible nutritional intake. He was certainly a skinny bastard, for all his wiry strength.

Where the hell was his lusus, and why wasn't he nagging Gamzee into eating right? The crab was always after Karkat to eat and wash and get some fresh air, and even if Karkat couldn't stand the constant griefing, he certainly appreciated it. Didn't Gamzee's lusus do the same?

And where was he right now, anyway? What pressing errand did he need to run at this very moment? What, were there some trolls in the vicinity he hadn't kidnapped yet? Or maybe he was only "out" on a recreational murder spree?

...And why the hell was Karkat giving that stupid clown so much thought?

As it happened, Gamzee was not out on a recreational murder spree. And while Karkat was giving Gamzee a lot of thought, simultaneously, Gamzee was giving Karkat the same.

Most of these thoughts were disjointed religious ruminations, except for the part which was about Gamzee wanting to prove to Karkat that he was not as inept as the little troll seemed to believe. It was a matter of principle, after all. He was highblood. He couldn't for a moment prove himself inadequate to any task. Shit like that got trolls of his station killed.

The first part of that plan was to find Karkat's hive again. This proved a bit difficult, because Karkat's hive was surrounded by numerous others, and Gamzee hadn't exactly been paying attention to its exact location the first time he visited; he'd been more interested in catching up to the brown-blood.

Still, once he got to the burned-out hive which had once belonged to the brown-blood, he managed to trace his steps back somewhat.

He just looked for the hive with the front door wide open. Not many like that in the area.

The corpse in the doorway was gone, dragged off by some diurnal scavenger, most likely. Only a stinking pool of rotting blood remained to mark its former location. Gamzee stepped over it, holding his breath.

Next, he tracked down Karkat's textile storage subunit. He took out a bunch of clothes and heaped them on the floor, then figured he'd put them all in a neat package so they'd only occupy one card. He searched the back of the subunit and ran across curious teal box. Opening it up, he found a gray coat. It looked a bit too elaborate, jarring with Karkat's style; closer to something a flarper would wear. Was Karkat into that shit?

Gamzee had taken a look around his respite block, and had seen no indication of this. He did see plenty of posters for bad romantic comedies, though. Karkat definitely seemed to be into those.

Either way, Gamzee bundled up the clothes and wrapped them in the coat, and captchalogued the whole mess. On the way out, he poked around Karkat's food preparation block, but couldn't find any Faygo in the refrigerifying unit. Clearly this was a huge oversight and he'd have to introduce the miracle-blooded troll to the wicked elixir as soon as possible.

He made his way back to his own hive, enjoying the evening breeze. He looked out to the ocean as he walked, but there was no sign of the old goat, and his prolonged absence was really starting to bum Gamzee out, even if the lusus was not very good company when he did bother to appear.

Karkat stood shivering in the ablution chamber for a long time, trying to decide what to do. The door did not have a lock, but there was something blocking it. Going back to sleep was not an option, and sitting around in sopor-crusted clothing was deeply unpleasant. Not to mention he felt slightly nauseous, probably because of the sandwich he'd consumed.

It would just perfect, just fucking perfect if Gamzee forgot all about him and left him here in this ablution chamber to rot. Just the final ass blister on the putrid descent into wretchedness his life had taken: dying propped up by the load gaper, alone, miserable and crusty all over.

And he didn't even care if Gamzee came back. Oh, no, now he was committed. He was going to play this thing through. He was going to sit down and die like the animal he was, unnoticed and unmourned.

Except just as Karkat was working him into a proper self-loathing fervor, he was interrupted by the sound of something heavy being dragged just outside the door. It opened and Gamzee loomed in the doorway, grinning from ear to ear.

"Evenin', motherfucker."

Karkat had never found deja vu so eerie.

Gamzee threw a bundle to the floor, and it took Karkat a few moments to realize it was full of his own clothes.

"I take it this means I'll be here for a while?" Karkat said.

Gamzee shrugged, still grinning.

"Shit, motherfucker, I dunno. Just planning for the motherfucking eventuality. Ain't that what you all were complaining 'bout the other night?"

"...thanks."

"Could stand to sound at least a bit more motherfucking grateful."

"Oh, thank you," Karkat burst, "thank you so much for your fucking hospitality, even if technically you kidnapped and terrorized me, thank you so much for feeding me, and putting me up for the day and fetching me clothes, even if your shitty food preparation skills nearly gave me food poisoning, and your fucking ablution trap gave me leg cramps, and you probably had to break into my hive for the second fucking time in two nights to get my things. No, no, other than those minor fucking issues, everything's been fucking peachy."

Gamzee's smile faded somewhat.

"Didn't have to motherfucking break in or nothin', door was open," he said.

"Oh, so the list of your failings is one item shorter! You think that fucking improves the situation, you nooksniffing idiot?"

And Karkat regretted the words as soon as they came out, because Gamzee's whole body tensed and his face settled into that expression he always got when he alternated between the oily slick tones of cold anger, and the unrelenting enraged screaming.

"You motherfucking forgot WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO, MOTHERFUCKER? You think you got anything TO MOTHERFUCKING COMPLAIN ABOUT?"

He advanced towards Karkat, who retreated a few steps until the backs of his thighs were against the edge of the ablution trap, and leaned back wishing he had more room to escape. Gamzee caught Karkat by the front of his shirt and pulled him properly upright, bringing their faces close enough together that Karkat thought he was going to get his face bitten off.

"I ain't got the motherfucking TIME OR PATIENCE to deal with your MOTHERFUCKING SHIT. I had a motherfucking SHITTY WEEK, and I ain't letting you ruin it JUST WHEN IT ALL WAS TURNING AROUND. This all getting through, motherfucker?"

Karkat nearly gaped. He was having a bad week? He was not being held hostage in someone's ablution chamber. He was not being terrorized and bled out by some maniac, and for that matter, he was not a freak of nature unfit to even appear on the hemospectrum.

"And what THE MOTHERFUCK is wrong with my food?" he continued, though he didn't look like he was expecting a reply.

But Karkat was shocked enough to actually answer that last question.

"You're fucking kidding, right? How much grub sauce can one person possibly need on a sandwich? It's a slice of yeast-based nutritional loaf, it isn't one of your fucking paintings. Show some restraint."

Gamzee released Karkat and looked around the ablution chamber, spotting the plate he'd left for Karkat.

"But you motherfucking ate them," he pointed out.

"I ate one, because I was hungry, and it made me feel sick. I threw the rest down the load gaper, like the shit it was."

"Aw, motherfucking hell, I think some a that grub sauce mighta been kinda old," Gamzee said, scratching the back of his neck thoughtfully.

Karkat tried not to gag. Grub sauce had a pretty long shelf life, but if it went off, it could be close to lethal to anyone who ate it.

"Please tell me sandwiches aren't the only thing you can make," Karkat said.

"Naw, I can... I can bake some pretty motherfucking sweet pies, too," Gamzee said, shifting his weight from one foot to another.

"So you've been surviving on sandwiches and pies this whole time?"

"Faygo, too."

"What the fuck is Faygo?" Gamzee opened his mouth to answer. "Nevermind, I already regret asking," Karkat cut him off. "We'll figure something out, but after you get rid of that expired crap."

"You're pretty motherfucking bossy for being a mutant-blooded freak," Gamzee snapped.

"And you're pretty fucking helpless for being such a cold-blooded asshole," Karkat shot back.

Gamzee had no reply to that, and Karkat just realized he'd hit upon the most efficient way to communicate. Apparently, nobody had ever tried being brutally honest with him until now. Gamzee had no idea how to react.

"I'll go and clean out the motherfucking kitchen," the clown said resentfully and walked out of the ablution chamber, dragging his feet like a petulant grub who'd been ordered by his lusus to go to sleep because it was past dawn.

Karkat unraveled the bundle of clothes and noticed they were wrapped in the godawful coat Terezi had sent him back when she was trying to get him into flarping—which he refused to do because, one, he did not play games for girls, and two, it was obviously a transparent ploy to find out his blood color, probably through some "accidental" injury. Terezi was not as clever as she thought she was, and he was not as stupid as he let on. She'd probably had Kanaya make it for him, which was a shame, because there was no fucking way in this life or the next he was going to wear it now, on account of his not being a pretentious douchebag.

It was mortifying, actually, that Gamzee even knew he owned such a coat, though Karkat didn't know why he cared about the opinion of a guy who went around dressed like a mentally unbalanced clown. A fancy flarping costume was downright conservative by comparison.

He picked out a fresh change of clothes and, after emptying the ablution trap of the thin layer of sopor on the bottom, washed up.

After getting dressed, he gathered the clothes from the floor and bundled them in the coat again. He wasn't sure what to do with them yet, or if Gamzee would let him store them somewhere, so he left them in a corner of the ablution chamber. He was not going to store his clothes to his sylladex, when the stupid encryption modus would just make it a pain to recover them.

He arrived in the food preparation block to witness Gamzee kneeling on the floor, rifling through storage units while muttering under his breath. There were two stacks of cans on either side of him, presumably separated by freshness. One stack was noticeably larger.

Gamzee must have taken out nearly everything out of the storage unit, because he was leaning in, half-disappearing in the darkness of the waist-high box.

"Are all those cans grub sauce?" Karkat asked as he approached.

Gamzee let out something which sounded a lot like a startled shriek. He lifted his head out of the storage unit, but his too-long horn cracked against the top of it with a sound which made even Karkat, with all his horn envy, wince in sympathy.

"Motherfucking OW," Gamzee yelled, hands going to his hornbed and rubbing. This only succeeded in tangling his unkempt hair further. "Trying to kill a motherfucker here?"

"I'm sorry, I thought you heard me," Karkat yelled in return. "The fuck kind of troll are you, if any asshole can trot right up to you without you hearing?"

"The kind with a motherfucking headache right now."

Karkat couldn't believe he was doing this, but he went up to Gamzee anyway. The clown looked at Karkat askance, but didn't seem alarmed or about to flip out again.

"Here, let me see what you managed to do to yourself," Karkat said, suppressing the urge to add you empty-panned bulgelicker.

Gamzee scowled, but sat down, crossed his legs and let Karkat take a look at his head.

Karkat pressed two fingers down against his scalp, through the mess of hair, at the midpoint between Gamzee's horns.

"Does this hurt?" he asked.

"No."

"How about this?" Karkat asked, and flicked the top of one horn.

"Yeah, but not too motherfucking much."

"Then you managed not to fracture your horns. You'll live. Or at least you won't die of sepsis from a fracture. Congratulations, I guess."

Gamzee snorted.

"Who motherfucking taught you to do that?" he asked.

"Nobody. I saw it in a movie once," Karkat replied.

He sat on the floor and inspected the cans in the larger stack. They were all expired, just as Karkat had dreaded. Some had passed their due dates sweeps ago. Had Gamzee never cleaned out his food preparation block? Judging by the cobwebs, probably not.

"Oh, yeah," Gamzee said suddenly. "I remember, you had all those motherfucking posters on your walls."

"Well, I'm sorry, not all of us can be into nightmarish representations of circus freaks," Karkat said. "Some of us have real fucking interests."

"Wasn't taking a motherfucking shot at you, bro," Gamzee said.

Karkat almost asked why not. He knew how shitty his own tastes were, he expected to be taken to task for this. But he sure as hell was not going to dwell on the question, so he changed the subject.

"There's a lot of grub sauce here," Karkat said. "Did you clean out the refrigerifying unit?"

"Nah, nothin' in there stays for too motherfucking long," Gamzee said. "It's where I keep my wicked elixir."

Karkat had no idea what that meant, so he got up, went to the refrigerifying unit and opened the door.

"What the fuck are you talking about? There's nothing but soda in here," Karkat said, slightly perplexed.

Gamzee grinned and nodded.

It was about midnight when they finished clearing out every last can of expired food, and Gamzee gathered them all in a corner, building what looked to Karkat like a heap of cans, but Gamzee claimed was a castle. A sense of whimsy could be a terrible thing.

But this kept Gamzee occupied while Karkat tried to prepare a proper meal, or at least the kind that would be far less likely to result in vomiting and/or death. Luckily, there had been a functional nutrition warming plate and a pan somewhere in that mess, and there was still a considerable amount of food left that was perfectly safe to eat. Karkat had double-checked, even if Gamzee insisted he could read the motherfucking labels. And true enough, he hadn't messed up. Karkat had no idea why he worried, though.

Actually, Karkat had no idea why he worried about Gamzee. What did he care if there was one less indigo in the world to boss around lowbloods and cull other trolls on a whim? How was that any loss from Karkat's perspective?

If the bastard dropped dead this very moment, wouldn't that be a good thing?

Karkat looked over his shoulder at Gamzee, who was trying to build a spire for the castle by putting smaller cans on top of larger ones, and at the look of serious concentration as he carefully worked, trying hard to keep the cans from falling over. When he wasn't in murder mode, he was pretty damn...

...pretty damn...

...pitiableohgodfuckingdamnit NO.

He was not developing red feelings for that asshole. He was Karkat Vantas, not a fucking rom-com character, some idiotic conciliatory ingenu who went pale for the first unstable lunatic he came across. He was not the cliché. It wasn't him.

If he was going to be a cliché, he was going to be the caliginous kind. Yeah, that's it, he was going to be the resentful victim who hated his aggressor so much that he found heretofore unknown depths of resourcefulness and eventually, through a string of unlikely but humorous incidents, became a worthy kismesis and evened the score.

Except he didn't really hate Gamzee in any romantic sense of the word, which made things a hell lot more inconvenient, because he sure as hell didn't want a moirallegiance with him. This was not how he pictured filling a quadrant, and Gamzee was definitely who he pictured filling it with. NOT. Not who he pictured filling it with. That's what he meant the first time.

Fuck. He was blushing now. He was sure of it. This was mortifying.

Did Gamzee notice? No, he was too busy trying to figure out how to build a can bridge. His can castle was turning into a can town. What a fucking ridiculous notion. He actually pitied this guy?

Yes. And he was making him lunch. Fuck fuck fuck. This was serious.

"Smells pretty motherfucking good," Gamzee said, startling Karkat.

"Uh, yeah," Karkat mumbled, and flipped the sizzling meat to cook on the other side. He stared down in the pan with undue attention.

Gamzee came up and leaned over Karkat's shoulder, inhaling deeply.

"And it don't look half motherfucking bad, neither," he added.

Karkat tried not to get too distracted by Gamzee's proximity, but this was difficult while he was also trying to suppress a new-found urge to turn around and... and nuzzle him. Fucking hormones. Now all he could think about were piles. This was ridiculous. Why did his mind have to go down that road in the first place?

Gamzee wandered off again, and Karkat quietly sighed in relief.

What a mess. Just when Karkat thought the universe had run out of ways to sabotage his life any further, it pulled shit like this. Unbelievable.

Gamzee took to the food with unbridled enthusiasm. It wasn't the best Karkat had ever made, but after just two nights of Gamzee's disgusting sandwiches it tastes like a feast—he could only imagine how it tasted after a whole lifetime.

Gamzee, in turn, handed Karkat a bottle of that soda he was obsessed with, Faygo. Karkat gave it a try and admitted that it was okay. Maybe not the best he'd ever drank, like Gamzee claimed, but it washed down the meal nicely.

"Motherfucking miracle on a plate," Gamzee said between bites—and he still chewed with his mouth open, and that still annoyed Karkat, but it was an endearing sort of annoyance, much to his own disgust.

"Glad you like it," Karkat mumbled in return.

After finishing lunch, Gamzee pushed his plate away and bounded off, but Karkat called him back.

"Hold on, what are you going to do with those?" he asked, pointing to the expired cans in the corner.

"Dunno," Gamzee shrugged. "Motherfucking throw them out, I guess."

Karkat was relieved he didn't plan to keep them and make Can Town a permanent fixture in the food preparation block, but Gamzee made no move towards them. Karkat stared at him expectantly.

"C'mon, bro, you want me to do that now?" Gamzee whined. "Don't I need to all let the motherfucking digestive juices work for a while, or some shit, before I up and put in work?"

"I guess," Karkat said begrudgingly. "Are you in a hurry somewhere?"

"Nah, was just going to the motherfucking beach, keep an eye out for the old goat," Gamzee shrugged. "Ain't seen him in a while."

"Oh," was the only thing Karkat said. So Gamzee did have a lusus, out there, somewhere.

Gamzee gave Karkat a speculative look, and tilted his head slightly towards the door.

"You all wanna come along, bro?" Gamzee asked slowly. He seemed hesitant; Karkat couldn't imagine it was for any other reason than because he feared another escape attempt.

"Sure," Karkat said, shrugging. He tried appearing nonchalant, but didn't have any delusions of actually having succeeded.

It was a clear night, with Alternia's pink moon waxing and the green one waning. It was warm, even hours after sunset, but there was a pleasant breeze coming off the ocean.

Gamzee started wandering the beach with his hands in his pockets, his shoulder hunched, and once in awhile he looked off onto the water. Karkat fell into step next to him, easy to do when he was walking slowly and stopping frequently.

It seemed kind of obvious in retrospect than Gamzee would have an aquatic lusus; he was about as high as you could get on the hemospectrum before you had to start growing gills. But by the stricken expression Gamzee had every time his eyes scanned the horizon and failed to find what he was looking for, this was not a fortunate situation.

Karkat tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about anything, actually, but whenever he made the attempt, his mind always seemed to gravitate back to Gamzee and how pitiable he was, and that was a train of thought Karkat always derailed before the impulse to hug the clown got too strong.

The silence didn't help. It was exceedingly awkward, though perhaps only on Karkat's part. Gamzee didn't seem to notice much. Karkat couldn't really figure out why he'd even been invited along.

Karkat found himself wondering if his own lusus had returned from wherever he'd been off to. Gamzee hadn't mentioned running into the crab, and he didn't have any injuries, either, to indicate anything like that happening. But then, maybe it hadn't been much of a fight...? No, that was absurd. Karkat had seen his lusus take on scarier things than a lanky adolescent troll in face paint.

Still, what would the crab make of the blood and of his ward's disappearance? Would he come to seek Karkat out? Would he find Karkat? Could he find Karkat?

At any rate, the crab would be distressed by his disappearance. Which, on some level, was a pleasing thought. Let the crab see how it felt, when someone just up and disappeared on you for days, gone who knows where and for who knows how long. But it felt unnecessarily mean to make his lusus worry like that. For all Karkat knew, the crab had legitimate reasons to disappear. Not that getting kidnapped wasn't a legitimate reason as well, but staying when an opportunity for escape presented itself made it iffy.

He really could escape just then. Gamzee was distraught, probably not in the mood for a chase. But then again, Gamzee knew where he lived. It wouldn't really be much of a chase, he could just casually walk to Karkat's hive and bash his head in. For all of Karkat's emotional upheaval, he didn't think Gamzee reciprocated his new-found pale crush.

At some point during the walk, Gamzee plopped down on the sand, facing the ocean. Karkat sat down as well, if only to shake out the sand from his shoes.

Gamzee took out two Faygos and handed one to Karkat.

"Thanks, bro," Gamzee said, bewildering Karkat.

"For what?" he asked, accepting the soda.

Gamzee shrugged.

"Weren't no motherfucking miracles tonight," Gamzee said suddenly, after another awkward stretch of silence.

"Does your lusus drop in rarely enough that it qualifies as a miracle?" Karkat asked.

Gamzee didn't reply at first.

"Wouldn't be so motherfucking worried, but he ain't been back in a while."

"How long a while?"

"Dunno. Three, four motherfucking perigees?"

Karkat did a double-take.

"And this sort of thing is normal with your lusus?"

"Shit, I wouldn't call it normal, motherfucker," Gamzee shrugged. "He ain't never been away for two perigees at a time, that I can remember."

"Two perigees is still a lot of fucking time between visits."

"That so?" Gamzee said airily, staring off into the ocean.

"Yes, yes it is," Karkat said firmly.

He wanted to say more, something to make things better, but he just knew that if he opened his mouth, something embarrassing would fall out, like are you feeling okay or do you want to talk about it, something just a bit too pale to say to someone who was still effectively a stranger without sounding a bit creepy.

"Ain't so motherfucking bad," Gamzee said unprompted, and Karkat wondered if he'd said what he was thinking out loud again. But no, he was certain he hadn't this time.

"Uh, it isn't?" Karkat said when it was clear Gamzee was expecting this to be a conversation.

"Always been like this, you know?" Gamzee continued. "I ain't never known different, 'cept maybe when I was still a motherfucking grub. You get motherfucking used to it. Ain't no big deal."

"You've done well enough on your own," Karkat offered, even though he felt it was a big deal and a feelings jam would make Gamzee feel much better. But Karkat was not Gamzee's moirail, and it would have been exceedingly inappropriate (and possibly lethal) to push for a feelings jam at that moment.

Gamzee made no further attempt at conversation.

Gamzee's lusus made no appearance while they were on their walk, and Gamzee's morose mood did not improve. He made his way back to his hive, Karkat trailing after him, and surprisingly, went right up to the cans, storing them to his sylladex one at a time. Karkat couldn't make sense of Gamzee's sylladex, seeing only a blur of color and motion, but he must have had a considerable number of cards, because soon enough, the kitchen was completely empty of the cans.

Gamzee returned to the beach, much to Karkat's confusion. He stood just near the water and expelled the cans one at a time from his sylladex. They were hurled violently through the air.

"Won't the seadwellers be pissed?" Karkat asked at one point.

"Nah," Gamzee shrugged. "What're the finfaced motherfuckers gonna say to me?"

Karkat threw a glance to the side of Gamzee's hive, splattered with violet blood, and silently concluded that they wouldn't get the opportunity to say much of anything at all, even if they made the attempt. Besides which, the activity seemed to be picking Gamzee's spirits up.

"Didja see how far that motherfucker went?" Gamzee whooped when a can was flung especially hard over the water and skipped on the surface three times before disappearing beneath the waves.

This went on for some time, until Gamzee accidentally threw a Faygo bottle out.

"Aw, shit," he muttered, looking comically crestfallen.

Karkat started snickering, but turned it into a cough when Gamzee turned to glare at him.

"Motherfucking sick of this, anyway," Gamzee muttered and turned on his heel to go back to his hive.

Karkat would have followed, except at that moment, a seadweller saw fit to make his appearance, emerging from the waves with a dramatic cape and a harpoon rifle. And Karkat would have almost been impressed by that entrance, except... well, this guy had "douchebag" written all over him.

He scowled at Karkat.

"You! Landdweller! You fuckin' responsible for this?" he asked in the most godawful annoying nasal voice Karkat could imagine, made worse by his weird seadweller accent. It was like there was no aspect of this guy that wasn't infused with douchebagginess.

The seadweller was waving a can in the hand not holding a rifle.

"What's it to you?" Karkat shot back.

The seadweller sneered and advanced on Karkat, who stood his ground just to be contrary. It was a stupid decision on his part, but the douchebag was pissing him off in ways Karkat had never been pissed off before.

"Get your prissy ass back in the motherfucking water, Ampora!" Gamzee yelled, having finally taken notice of the going-ons behind him.

"Shoulda guessed you were friends with that fuckin' ecological disaster," the douchebag spat at Karkat as he looked at Gamzee. "Stop throwin' your shit in the ocean!"

"Lots of worse motherfucking stuff in the ocean already, brother," Gamzee growled back, in a way to imply that such a category included the seadweller.

Karkat wisely backed off from the two. No reason he should get hurt in someone else's argument—or get his shoes splattered with blood when Gamzee did this douchebag in.

The seadweller pulled himself up to his full height—which wasn't very impressive when compared to Gamzee—and bared his teeth.

"Turn around now, motherfucker," Gamzee warned low. "I ain't in the mood for your motherfucking games."

"Who's playin'?" Ampora shot back, leveling his rifle at Gamzee and raising his chin haughtily.

The douchebag was blackflirting, Karkat realized suddenly. With Gamzee. Who was definitely not blackflirting back. But the seadweller seemed to have no concept of how off the mark he really was, and there was no way this situation was going to end well.

And sure enough, Gamzee was having none of it. Moving faster than either Karkat or Ampora expected, he knocked the rifle aside, sending it flying into the sand, grabbed the douchebag by the neck, and lifted him clear off the ground.

"I told you, motherfucker, I TOLD YOU. I told you to turn around AND GO BACK TO PLAYING WITH YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FISH. Was I not clear, motherfucker, OR ARE YOUR EARS FULL OF MOTHERFUCKING SEAWEED?"

Ampora was flailing weakly, his hands scratching at Gamzee's, leaving indigo gouges in his skin. But Gamzee seemed completely oblivious to the pain, and Ampora was making loud choking sounds.

"Gamzee," Karkat called out, but the clown was in murder mode again, and deaf to anything else.

"Now you gotta come AND PISS ME OFF, so I'm gonna teach you A MOTHERFUCKING LESSON about leaving a motherfucker ALONE."

He released Ampora, and the seadweller dropped to his knees, wheezing. But before he could catch his breath, Gamzee grabbed the ends of his scarf and pulled them in opposite directions, cutting off his air yet again.

Karkat was jarred from his mute horror at that moment. No matter how huge of a douchebag Ampora was, he didn't deserve to die just because he had bad timing and the social grace of a lobotomized crawfish.

Before he could stop and think about it, he walked right up to Gamzee, grabbed one of his wrists and papped him on the back.

"Gamzee, shoosh," Karkat whispered.

Gamzee froze in place. He was angry and panting and shaking, and though he wasn't actively strangling Ampora anymore, he wasn't letting go either.

But he wasn't turning around to kill Karkat, either, so that was an encouraging sign, wasn't it?

"Shoosh," Karkat said again, papping his shoulder next. Gamzee relaxed marginally. "Shoosh," and Karkat papped the side of Gamzee's face this time.

He let go of the scarf. Ampora fell forward face-first, and by the sound of his sputtering, got a mouthful of sand. Karkat didn't look at the seadweller, and neither did Gamzee, who was staring off into the horizon, his anger melting away slowly.

Ampora scrambled after his rifle. Karkat could see him from the corner of his eye, but the seadweller didn't say or try anything, only jumped in the ocean and disappeared.

Karkat continued shooshing and papping Gamzee for a while, seeing the tension melt away from him with every passing moment.

Finally, Gamzee turned to Karkat and, before he could react, pulled the smaller troll in a bone-crushing hug, nuzzling his hair. Karkat tolerated the greasepaint in his hair, especially since for a split second, he'd feared that Gamzee really was going to crush his bones.

And also... it was nice. It made him feel gooey and warm on the inside, even if only in the metaphorical sense, because in the literal, his ribs were getting a bit bruised. His arms were trapped between their bodies, and he was sure his circulation was being cut off, but he didn't mind as much as he should have. Karkat nuzzled Gamzee's chest; he smelled like blood, paint thinner and something salty-sweet, and he was cool to the touch. None of these things were comforting in and of themselves, but it was strange what difference being pale for someone made. It was nice to feel... needed, by someone. It was validating. And it didn't last for nearly as long as Karkat hoped it would.

Gamzee sighed heavily and loosened his deathgrip on Karkat, standing still with his cheek against one of Karkat's nubby horns. Karkat shifted his arms slightly, now that he could feel his hands again, but Gamzee took this the wrong way and released Karkat, stepping back.

He ran a hand through his messy hair—or tried to—and pointedly avoided Karkat's eyes. Wordlessly, he turned and walked back to his hive.

Karkat didn't understand, didn't know what to do except follow. His encyclopaedic knowledge of rom-com clichés were no use in figuring out what had gone wrong, what he'd done wrong, because count on Karkat Vantas to fuck up things just when they were going well, so he just followed.

Gamzee was slumped against the wall next to the door, his knees drawn up to his chest. His facepaint was messed up, smudged and marked with thin lines where he'd been nuzzling Karkat's hair. His hands were scratched and dripping indigo on the carpet and on his pants, but Gamzee didn't even notice. He was staring at nothing, looking utterly miserable.

Karkat couldn't stand to see him like this, couldn't stand not doing anything about it. He kneeled in front of Gamzee, but he didn't know what to say, either.

"Didn't have to motherfucking do that, brother," Gamzee said after a while. He didn't look at Karkat, preferring to address the opposite wall.

"No, but I suppose that nooksniffer was asking to be strangled with his own stupid scarf sooner or later," Karkat said, his attempt at humor falling flat.

"Man, fuck Eridan and his motherfucking stupid fish games," Gamzee sneered, and it took Karkat a few moments to realize that that must have been the seadweller's other name. "Not what I was motherfucking talking about. Shouldn't no one else have to deal with my shit, is what I'm saying."

Gamzee drew his palm over his face, smearing the paint until gray skin started showing through.

"The fuck is wrong with me, all jumping some motherfucker just trying to get his blackrom on?" Gamzee muttered.

"Look, you can't blame yourself for the fact that that guy is a pushy douchebag," Karkat said. "You told him you weren't interested, but he still wouldn't fuck off."

"I'm still motherfucking sorry."

"I'm sure he'll learn something from the experience."

"No, motherfucker. I meant for the other thing. Didn't motherfucking mean to get you having to act all pale. Wasn't trying to... motherfucking trick you, or anything."

"...Oh. No, I wasn't... it wasn't like..." Karkat felt a blush creep onto his face and held it back by sheer power of will. He opted for irritation instead.

How could he even begin to explain that it wasn't an act, that he really was pale for Gamzee? It hadn't been a fling, like Gamzee implied, or any form of psychological coercion, but what could he say that wouldn't sound like he was merely placating the troll holding him hostage?

"I'mma go clean up," Gamzee said, starting to climb to his feet.

"No, sit," Karkat said, putting a hand to Gamzee's knee. The clown froze in place, with his back still leveraging against the wall. "I mean it, we need to talk."

Gamzee slumped back down, staring at Karkat with an unreadable expression. Karkat licked his dry lips, trying to gather his thoughts.

"You really need a moirail," he said, after finally settling on the direct course of action.

"Yeah, kinda motherfucking figured that," Gamzee snorted.

"No, listen. You really fucking need a moirail," he yelled—just a bit—out of habit. "You're the fucking poster child for moirallegiance. You go around murdering trolls like a lunatic off his leash, you don't know the first fucking thing about taking care of yourself, and at the slightest problem, you flip your shit harder than an apebeast aiming for a fancy shirt at the animal exhibition enclosure. I can't stress this enough: you need a fucking moirail."

Gamzee nodded sullenly.

"And... and maybe I do, too, a little," Karkat continued, his anger at the world tapering off into self-loathing, like it often did. "I don't... I've never..."

He had a whole speech ready in his head, but somewhere between his mind and his lips, the connection was interrupted. His throat burned like it did when he felt like crying.

"Nobody's ever known what..." He made a helpless gesture towards the gray sign on his shirt, but couldn't go on. Words, so many words, clogged up in his think-pan, bleeding into each other.

Gamzee nodded, his expression softening. Karkat couldn't say anything else, so he hung his head. He was not crying, because he'd had years of practicing not crying. Gamzee put a hand against the back of Karkat's head and gently drew him closer, until Karkat fell against his chest and buried his face in Gamzee's shirt.

Gamzee wrapped his arms around Karkat and sighed into his hair.

"Motherfucking serendipitous miracles," Gamzee muttered nonsensically.

Karkat didn't reply, but he clung to Gamzee's shirt a bit tighter.